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Ruth Barrett Quotes

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Famous Ruth Barrett Quotes

“If you were born female, you were born on a battlefield. You will be punished for even saying that out loud, but the grim truth is you are going to be punished no matter what for the sin of being female.”

“Patriarchy has effectively used exclusion as a central tenet of its ideological claims to hegemony in all our societies, where one is looking at notions of identity, of rights and privilege, of access and inclusion into institutions and sites of power.”

“When women occupy public spaces as persons who understand that for millennia they have been denied their inalienable rights as human beings, they begin to demand the restitution of those rights through the creation of structures within which they situate financial, technical and intellectual resources.”

“What is "male privilege," and why is it important to name the elephant in the living room? My friend Patricia Monaghan (of blessed memory) describes it this way: "For those who have male privilege, it's like a person wearing strong perfume. Rarely can the wearer smell it, but those around begin to leave the room.”

“If feminism was reduced to one word, it would be this: No. "No" is a boundary, spoken only by a self who claims one. Objects have neither; subjects begin at "No". Feminists said "No" and we meant it.”

“Some nouns: glass, scissors, razors, acid. Some verbs: cut, scrape, cauterize, burn. These nouns and verbs create unspeakable sentences when the object is a seven year old girl with her legs forced open. The clitoris, with it's 8000 nerve endings, is always sliced up. In the most extreme forms of female genital mutilation (FGM), the labia are cut off and the vagina is sewn shut. On her wedding night, the girl's husband will penetrate her with a knife before his penis.”